ROME (Reuters) – Six people, including British technology magnate Mike Lynch and a Morgan Stanley executive, are missing, one person is dead and there are 15 survivors after a luxury yacht sank off the northern coast of Sicily.
Here’s what we know about the August 19 accident and what marine experts say about what might have happened.
SEVERE STORM
The Bayesian, a 56-metre (184-foot) British-flagged superyacht, sank in the dark just before 5 a.m. (03:00 GMT) off the port of Porticello near Palermo after being hit by a “violent storm”, the Italian coast guard said.
The coast guard said bad weather had been forecast, but added that it had been more severe than expected. Some locals spoke of a waterspout or cyclone of exceptional strength. “It was a strange thing,” fisherman Andrea Carini told Reuters. The Bayesian was anchored with its sails down when the storm struck, and another yacht was moored nearby.
The other boat
The nearby yacht, the 42-metre Sir Robert Baden Powell, remained at anchor and weathered the storm after its captain started the engine to maintain control of the vessel and avoid a collision with the Bayesian.
Captain Karsten Borner said he did not know whether the Bayesian’s crew had managed to turn on the engines. “I don’t think they did anything wrong. I think they were surprised by the force of the storm,” he told Reuters.
“All I know is that they were lying flat on the water with the mast and sank within two minutes,” he said, adding that the storm was “very violent, very intense” and brought with it “a lot of water and, I believe, a vortex system like a tornado.”
FAST KENTING
Andrea Ratti, a professor of naval design at the Polytechnic of Milan, said a boat the size of the Bayesian could only sink so quickly if it took on a huge amount of water. “You can make plausible assumptions that leave room for doubt,” he said, suggesting that one or more portholes, windows or other openings could have been broken or smashed open by the waterspout, allowing water to enter.
There was also speculation in the media that an important hatch may have been accidentally left open.
However, an industry expert in the UK said it would have taken hours for the Bayesian to fill with enough water to sink it, making its rapid demise incomprehensible. “I don’t think the industry has ever seen anything like this. It’s a horror story,” he said, asking not to be named.
Firefighter diver Marco Tilotta told the daily Il Messaggero that the wreck was “apparently intact,” with no “scratches, no signs of impact.” However, only half of the hull is visible to divers.
HIGHEST MAST
Built in 2008 by Perini Navi, an Italian luxury yacht builder, Bayesian won awards for her design. According to Perini, she featured the world’s tallest aluminum mast at 72 meters.
Ratti said an unusually high mast was not in itself a weak point in a storm. A second expert, civil engineer Filippo Mattioni, agreed, also pointing out the possibility that “an open hatch” could let water in. Both experts were skeptical about a broken mast, which could have caused major damage by hitting the hull. “If the mast had been broken, they would not have capsized,” said Captain Borner.
RETRACTABLE KEEL
The Bayesian had a retractable keel – the fin-like structure under the hull that helps stabilize boats and acts as a counterweight to the mast. Both Ratti and Mattioni wondered whether the yacht was anchored with the keel up, which would have reduced its water depth from about 10 to 4 meters and made it less stable. Ratti said the boat could have started swinging wildly “like a pendulum” in strong winds, which would have put exceptional stress on the mast. But even if that had led to its breakage, “this alone is not enough to justify the sinking,” he said.
INVESTIGATION
The public prosecutor’s office in the nearby town of Termini Imerese has opened an investigation into the disaster. It will likely take months for their case to be concluded.
(Reporting by Alvise Armellini, additional reporting by Giselda Vagnoni and Josephine Mason in London; Editing by Crispian Balmer and Sharon Singleton)
